Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves
by KHoobs
Summary: This is an experiment. Cas and Dean are sent to a small town in Iowa to figure out why the spirits of an old Romany cemetery are suddenly restless and vengeful. Assisted by a 'friend' of Charlie's, they may find that small town Iowa can hide some pretty big secrets. Based on a real location/haunted cemetery. Currently T for language.


Charlie was the one who found the case. When asked about how she found it, she blushed slightly and told them, "She's a, um, a good friend I met at a Star Wars thing once." Dean and Sam raised their eyebrows. Dean smirked, but before he could make a lewd retort, Charlie continued, "Listen, guys, she knows all kinds of stuff like you guys, and she's a really good friend, okay."

The case would take Dean and Cas to a small town in the middle of Iowa. Sam stayed behind in the bunker, looking for a remedy to the Abaddon situation that Crowley, still chained in the dungeon, insisted would be cropping up again sooner than anybody would like. Charlie declined tagging along. She assured Dean that her 'friend' was, "in on the know enough to help you out. She just can't handle this one on her own."

It was a seven-hour drive: no big deal for Dean. Cas was still uncomfortable being cooped up in the Impala for too long, so the relatively short drive meant that Dean wouldn't be so adverse to stopping occasionally so Cas could stretch his legs. He got whiney and fidgety when he wanted out of the car.

As they crossed the state line from Nebraska into Iowa, Dean turned to Cas with a wide grin on his face.

"Hey, Cas, is this Heaven?" The former angel squinted at the man in confusion.

"No, Dean. This is Iowa." Cas scowled as Dean cracked up with laughter. "What is so funny?"

"It's a movie. _Field of Dreams_? Dead baseball players come out of the cornfield and ask if they're in Heaven? For such a shitty state, Iowa's got some great movie connections. When we're done with this case, we could go see where the Duke was born. John Wayne, actor. We could go see where Captain Kirk is _going_ to be born," Dean continued to chuckle to himself as Cas turned away, a confused expression still on his face.

Looking out the window at the hills of southern Iowa, Cas asked, "What exactly is this case, Dean? Who is this woman that Charlie is sending us to?" Dean shrugged, still pleased with himself over his well-timed joke.

"Dunno. Charlie didn't give a lot of details. Said this chick knows her shit, but whatever is going on, she needs an assist," Dean replied, pulling off of the interstate into an Iowa Welcome Center. He parked the Impala and moved to get out.

"I gotta take a leak and get some vending machine coffee. Ten minutes, back on the road. Kay?" Cas had learned a convincing eye-roll from Sam, and Dean grinned and walked off. Cas huffed and got out of the car, too. He stretched and walked towards the dog run. He preferred to walk on the grass, and was pleased by other travelers' pets. Dean was still very adamant about no animals in the Batcave.

Ten minutes later they were back on the road. There was only about three hours left in the drive. Dean turned the radio on, and Cas continued to watch the landscape fly by. He had once tried to bring a book with him in the car, but found that reading on the road made him nauseous.

Driving through Iowa was boring as hell, but they made it through and were finally driving through a small residential area, looking for the address Charlie had given them. It brought them to a white house on a street corner. Dean pulled into the driveway next to a '57 Chevy Impala, looking newly restored. He nodded in appreciation.

"Well, she's got good taste in cars, I'll give her that," Dean said as he and Cas climbed out of their own car. They turned to see a young woman squeezing herself out of the front door of the house, shouting obscenities at some barking dogs who seemed to be trying to escape.

She met Dean and Cas down by their car, extending a hand out to Cas, "Hey! You guys must be who Charlie sent me." Cas stared at her a moment before taking her hand formally. "Cas and Dean, right? Cool. I'm Katie. I don't know if Charlie told you, but I've got rooms made up here for you. I hope you don't mind dogs or cats, but they're kept out of the guest rooms." A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth when she saw Dean's face drop and Cas' brighten as she mentioned the animals.

"Okay, well, you guys are real chatterboxes. Come on in. I'll rein in the pups for you." Without another word, she turned back to the house and opened the door. The men gave each other a skeptical look before following her.

Inside, she was holding two pit bulls by their collars, telling them repeatedly to calm their asses down. Dean eyed the dogs. Katie caught his gaze and rolled her eyes.

"You can calm your ass, too, man. I'm only holding them back so they don't lick you to death. Zoë and Bruno. They will not hurt you. That's the cats' jobs. Which reminds me, Dean, Charlie said you're allergic to cats, so I've got some allergy meds that should help you out a bit. You're welcome." She pulled the dogs into the living room before letting them go. They bounded past Dean and jumped up onto Cas, who beamed.

"Okay, let's get you two settled in and then we can get to figuring this shit out. There's a bedroom on the main floor and one up on the second floor. My mom's room is on the main floor, but she's gone for a few months. I'm upstairs. You can flip a coin if you have to. All of my info and shit on this case is on the dining room table." Katie threw herself into an armchair and looked at the two of them. "You're not getting a grand tour. There's literally one hallway and one staircase. You won't get lost."

"Well aren't you just the charming hostess," Dean quipped, sidling around Castiel and the dogs. "I assume the mutts stay upstairs with you, so I'll take the downstairs room. You and Cas can have a zoo slumber party."

Katie rolled her eyes and tossed a box of over-the-counter allergy pills at him, which he caught before making his way around the cats that had appeared and decided to investigate his legs. He disappeared around the only hallway corner in the small house. The young woman turned her blue-eyed gaze on Cas, who was surrounded by the two dogs and three cats.

"If they bother you, just push them out of the way. It won't help much, but it'll give you a few seconds to escape." She looked at Cas curiously. He seemed to be so caught up in the attention of the herd that he hadn't heard a word she'd said. She rolled her eyes and clapped her hands. Immediately the dogs turned from their newfound friend and went to sit in front of her.

"C'mon, I'll take you upstairs. I know I said no tours, but I've got some other shit I need to get from my room," she said over her shoulder as she and the pit bulls wandered through the dining room to a stairwell. Cas picked up his small bag and followed cautiously.

"Are the animals banned from the guest rooms for any particular reason?" Katie nearly jumped at the low voice, echoing around her in the narrow stairwell.

She looked behind her and shrugged, "Just for convenience of the guests. Charlie said Dean wasn't keen on pets, so I figured I'd rather be safe than sorry. If you want to leave your door open, go ahead. But you'll wake up covered in animals," she warned. Cas didn't reply, but smiled slightly.

Roughly five minutes later, Katie had the dogs chained up outside so the three hunters could gather around the table in peace, with the exception of the two cats that had decided to take up residence in Cas' lap.

"Okay, so Charlie said that you've got this case and you can't handle it on your own. So what is it? Witches, poltergeist, vamp nest, what?" Dean sounded a little exasperated with the young woman. Leave it to Charlie to send them to babysit an amateur huntress, no matter how attractive she was.

"It's not that I can't handle it on my own, it's that I don't want to. I'm the only hunter left in the area, and I just got back from overseas. I was in the UK for a year for graduate school, and you wouldn't believe the sort of hunting jobs over there. Really interesting, and the hunters all have different techniques. It was like getting two Master's degrees at once. Anyway, I digress." She unfolded a map of the county and pointed to an innocuous piece of blank paper.

"Out here, in, like, the middle of nowhere, is this cemetery, right? Well, in the middle of this cemetery is a smaller cemetery. An old gypsy cemetery. Rumors of a gypsy queen's ghost protecting this place have been floating around for decades. Kids have gone out there on dares, tourists looking for 'haunted places' come through every once in a while, but there's never been any serious harm done.

That is, until about a month ago, when the farmer whose land goes right up to the edge of the cemetery was murdered, along with his family. All four of them, really ornate knives stuck in their chests, laid out in a line on their lawn. They were found by the kids' bus driver. No fingerprints at all found on the knives, of course, and no suspects. The only distinguishing details are Romany designs on the blades. Old Romany designs. Police have been trying to find someone to translate them or whatever. Having a bit of trouble, seeing how reclusive the Romanies are."

Katie paused to shuffle the papers around, pulling up crime scene pictures of the slaughtered family, and one of the so-called gypsy cemetery. It was actually a pretty picture, considering the subject. A wrought-iron fence around a plot of land with headstones surrounding an ancient tree.

Dean scoffed quietly and leaned back in the wooden chair. "Four murders does not quite a case make, sweetheart. Please tell me there's something else, or I'm heading back to Kansas. And I'm going to leave Cas here with your farm." Katie scowled at him.

"Yes, jackass, there is more. The two officers who went poking around in the gypsy cemetery on 'hunches' ended up dead in the exact same way: Romany knives in their hearts, laid side by side on the ground outside the fence of the cemetery. And everyone else involved with the case has reported hearing the sounds of horses and wagons and strange music outside their homes at night. Including me. So I'm a little bit peeved, a little bit paranoid, and a lot pissed off. I figure something needs to either be returned to the cemetery that got taken, or the whole place needs to be turned into a bonfire. Now that I'm hearing the damn entourage, I figured I could do with some backup. Which is where you two come in."

Cas had spent the entire exchange caressing the cats and looking over the pictures of the dead and the cemetery over quietly.

"If it's a vengeful spirit taking revenge on those who infringe on its territory, why hasn't it killed anyone before? You said that people have been visiting the site for years. And what could there be there to be taken that would incur the spirit's wrath? Were any of the graves desecrated?" The girl eyed the man with intrigue.

"Asking the right questions, sir. The entire site has remained untouched. No vandalism, no summoning of pissed-off Gypsy ghosts, nothing that I've been able to find. My best guess is that it's some big anniversary for the spirit, though it's hard to tell since the origins of the cemetery are difficult to date."

She shuffled all of the papers and photos into a pile and tossed them in front of Dean before standing up and stretching. "All right guys, it's late. I need food, and I assume you do, too. Pizza okay? I don't feel like cooking tonight." Without waiting for an answer from either of the two, she had whipped out her mobile and was bantering on the phone with someone she knew who worked at the pizza place, ordering as she walked through the house to let the dogs in through the back door.

While she was gone, Dean took the opportunity to look over at Cas, still petting the purring cats.

"She's a damn piece of work, isn't she? I'll bet you anything that she and Charlie hooked up. She's got that vibe, y'know? Still, she does seem to know her shit. And if she's got these spirits on her tail just from looking in on this case, it may be way more complicated than we anticipated. What do you think of her?" Dean smirked at Cas. "You sure spent a lot of the conversation staring at her. I mean, she's hot, yeah, nice figure, great eyes. A little short for my taste, though. And bossy as fuck."

Cas looked up at the man across the table, frowning slightly. "She's been perfectly polite with me. The two of you have very similar personalities. I think you're both trying to push each other's buttons. I've been trying to figure out more of her character. You hunters all seem to have deep-seated troubles you don't like to admit. She's got some, and I'm hoping that they won't become an issue in this hunt," he explain rationally, but continued, almost shyly, "She is pretty though. I don't see how her height is any sort of deterrence from her attractiveness."

Just then Katie reentered the room, two mellowed-out pit bulls trotting behind her. "Pizza'll be here in about ten. I'll get some plates down for us. I'm taking mine upstairs to bed, though. I'm beat. Dealing with you has worn me out." She smirked playfully at Dean before continuing, "But the real work starts tomorrow. You guys are going to have to do the more intense investigating with the local law enforcement. Everyone here knows me. That's the trouble with working a case in your home town. And everyone would rather ask me about England than discuss the deaths. So I hope you brought your grown-up suits. Tomorrow's going to be fun." She smiled again and went off to find her wallet to pay for their incoming dinner.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

I've not written Spn fiction before. Like I said in the summary, this is an experiment. Yes, the OC is me. Sue me. I do actually own a '65 Impala. I used to own a pit bull named Bruno. The haunted Gypsy Cemetery is a real place.

Anyway... Constructive criticism is always appreciated.

Cheers.

K.


End file.
